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Willing the Good: Agathon and Prohairesis

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Willing the Good: Agathon and Prohairesis The Roman Stoics: Seneca and Epictetus 3 Willing the Good: Agathon and Prohairesis 1. The Good Benefits, and so Does Virtue (1) Aetius (Greek doxographer, c. 100 CE): “The Stoics said that wisdom (σοφία) is scientific knowledge (ἐπιστήµη, epistēmē) of the divine and the human, and that philosophy is the practice of expertise in utility (φιλοσοφίαν ἄσκησιν ἐπιτηδείου τέχνης). Virtue first and foremost is utility, and virtues, at their most generic, are triple: the physical one (φυσικόν), the ethical one (ἠθικόν), and the logical one (λογικόν). Hence philosophy too has three parts: physics, ethics and logic. Physics is practised whenever we investigate the world and what is in it, ethics is our engagement with human life, and logic our engagement with discourse, which they also call dialectic.” (LS 26A, SVF 2.35). (2) Seneca’s point in The Happy Life, ‘true happiness is located in virtue’ (16.1). So, there is a connection between happiness (eudaimonia), virtue, and the good (ἀγαθὸν, agathon). Aristotle’s idea: the good is the end (aim) of all action. The highest good (i.e. the ariston) is self-sufficient (autarkes) and final (teleion), and so the (super-)end of action (tōn praktōn ousa telos; NE I.7 1097b20). So, formally, the good is what is not done for the sake of anything else. (Note there is a range of ‘lower’ goods—the ‘indifferents’. Their value is instrumental; some of these goods are ‘worth choosing’; see below). (3) The highest (and only real) good is virtue; the only bad is vice. The good constitutes a genuine benefit for the individual, it has utility; it is intrinsically valuable (as just hinted: an end in itself); the key to a happy life. So, what is good is not merely desired (like a nice cup of coffee), it is what ought to be desired: the good has normative power; it is morally good, rather than ‘merely’ consistent with my nature (in the way in which decent food is). (4) Virtue is a benefit—it is good for something. So there is a relational aspect: and that aspect is life as a whole. Diogenes Laertius (3rd century): “Virtue is a consistent character (diathesin homologoumenēn), choiceworthy for its own sake (di autēn einai hairetēn) and not from fear or hope or anything external (exothen). Happiness consists in virtue, insofar as virtue is a soul fashioned to achieve consistency in the whole of life (pros tēn homologian pantos tou biou)” (LS 61A, SVF 3.39). As a consistent state of mind, virtue enables us to act as one should according to nature; and such acts require knowledge (including knowing what is valuable or what is suitable). So, virtue is a state of mind where everything one holds true integrates or fits together into a systematic and stable body of knowledge. In this sense, virtue is ‘one’ or has unity. (5) The idea is that moral value is free from external contingencies; that it is ‘unconditioned’. Morality is not supposed to be a matter of luck. What results from happy or unhappy circumstances does not really count as the outcome of moral considerations—motives, intentions, and moral character. Eudaimonia is thus an achievement; perhaps the one thing we desire for its own sake—namely that our life goes well. In this sense, eudaimonia is linked with well-being: S is eudaimon if and only if S lives a life that is best for S (all things considered). Recall: excellence is ‘bestness’. OUDCE Michaelmas Term 2019 | Peter Wyss (6) The link, another take: what promotes eudaimonia is good—in particular it is good ‘for’ flourishing. And since that is virtue, virtue is the (main, only) good. (7) The central task is to develop and maintain our understanding of truths about value: extend knowing the good. This is the same as striving to be more virtuous. The pursuit of happiness = the pursuit of wisdom (i.e. philosophy). So, we can say that virtue is wisdom. Becoming virtuous is to (increasingly) master the art or craft (technē) of living. The virtuous life is hence the life well lived—the life worth living. The ‘eudaimon’ life is a life where the agent cultivates virtue and knowledge. (8) To live well is to be in tune—synchronized, consistent—with nature, or the cosmic flow of things, but also with our internal (psychic) harmonious or coherent flow. (Plato writes of the balanced or ‘just’ soul as the happy one.) (9) Moral progress (prokōpē) means increasingly to understand the rational cosmic plan and how to fit in it, to learn about ourselves and our own nature, and to embrace fate willingly (not resist it—see Seneca Ep. 76.34–5). So, we ‘agree’ in many ways: internal consistency, consistent with cosmic reason, so that our actions reflect knowledge of one’s own nature (e.g., figuring out kathēkonta, what to ‘affiliate’ with and how, what affective attitudes to have—what to find desirable), what to ‘select’, improve and refine our knowledge of human nature generally, and of nature as a whole. Choice is thus one of the main themes in Epictetus. 2. Prohairesis: Volition, Choice (1) Volition, or the capacity for rational choice, is truly ours. The term of this capacity is prohairesis (προαίρεσις). It contains haireō (αἱρέω), which means ‘to grasp’ or ‘to seize’, so prohaireō means something like ‘before having’, i.e. selecting, preferring, deciding, or choosing. (2) Prohairesis as the use of rational choice is free (Disc. 1.12.9). Hence it is crucial for Stoic therapy to develop a more adequate sense for what is ‘up to us’ (ἐφ᾽ ἡµῖν, eph’ hēmin) and what is not. We can only rationally will what is up to us, or what falls within our range of options. If we select what is not in our power, we are bound to become unhappy. Making right choices is thus the main task for a flourishing life. A right choice is one that agrees with our nature. (3) Cognitivism. What we perceive, i.e. our impressions, need not ‘drive’ us. For as rational animals, we can assent to what appears to us (what we see, smell, hear etc.), before it motivates us to act. We act on evaluative judgements; and these are ‘up to us’, while the impressions are not (see Handbook 5 for the classic passage). (4) Moral progress thus consists in clarifying what has value and what lacks it. This can be seen as a move from an instinctive pursuit of ‘natural’ goods to more rational and natural choices—but the key is not just that we acquire goods, but that we acquire them in the right (kathēkon) way, i.e. in way that agrees with human excellence: virtue. (More to follow.) (5) Kant, a closet Stoic? ‘It is impossible to think of anything that is good without limitation except a good will’ (GMS I, IV393.5–7). This work is licensed by the University of Oxford under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England & Wales Licence .
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